Trifecta Year One Pop Up Arts Event: Meet the Artists

Trifecta Editions is a print collective based in Boston and Cambridge, and the brainchild of two talented and brilliantly creative women, Helen Popinchalk and Morgan Grenier. The two have fashioned and curated Trifecta Editions’ inaugural arts and culture event, Trifecta: Year One, which will begin today at Boston’s Fourth Wall Project and run through Sunday. The four-day event, created to celebrate the creative community that Trifecta has tapped into over its first year in business, is intensely programmed with a group exhibition, live painting and drawing, artist talks, presentations and panels, skillshare sessions, live music performances, exclusive print releases and a Trifecta Editions pop-up shop.

The event, which aims to celebrate the vibrant, creative, kind and generous community of artists Popinchalk and Grenier have come to know over the past year gives people the chance to do more than just look at art; boasting otherwise unlikely opportunities to have an art experience. Year One attempts to bring a little sampling of the people making interesting art and creating cool projects, allowing Boston to become acquainted with the print collective’s select artists. Plus, they love a good party.

People can expect a more personal show, with lots of interaction between art lovers, collectors, pop culture freaks, and the artists themselves.

“We see our work with artists as a conversation between media, and we want to let people in on that dialogue,” says Popinchalk and Grenier. “Screen printing is such a great medium for sharing art–it enables and encourages the creation of multiples without diminishing quality. The event has given us the opportunity to bring our artists and their work together in a physical space, so people can expect a group show that goes beyond a theme, it’s almost anti-theme. It’s about finding the common ground between disparate media or content and celebrating art and the rad people that make it.”

Farel Dalrymple

There’s no doubt that Farel Dalrymple’s intricate and detail oriented comics are filled with the Portland-based artist’s impeccable illustrations, but dig a little deeper and you realize what an amazing storyteller he is as well. Co-founder of and regular contributor to the comic book anthology “Meathaus,” Dalrymple not only creates comic book illustrations that are like candy for the eyes, but pairs his breathtaking art with surreal and richly authentic storylines.

Q: What are you most excited for during the Trifecta Year One event?A: I am excited about people in the area getting to see pages from my book, “The Wrenchies.” I worked on that book for five years in relative isolation. Now that it is done I am compelled to show the art to everyone I can. Getting to do that Goggle Kids print with Trifecta was a very cool thing to me too.

Q: What’s currently inspiring you?A: For art, Moebius is always a good go to. I like this comic book artist, Little Thunder. Taiyo Matsumotos, Sunny books are solidly excellent. Dave Taylor just drew the latest issue of “Prophet”. I just read it and it was fantastic. I love the work of Mike Mignola too.

Q: Who or what were some major influences when you first started creating?A: Early influence was mostly 70’s and 80’s marvel comics stuff, primarily John Buscema, but there is some Walt Simonson and a slew of others in there. I looked at that Smithsonian collection of newspaper comics a lot and I liked the old illustrator, NC Wyeth.

Q: What projects are you currently working on?A: Right now I am working on a few pages on the last issue of “Prophet” for Image comics, and just starting up on “The Earfarmer,” with Chris Stevens for Dark Horse Presents. I am also somewhat erratically post to my Study Group comic/webcomic, “It Will All Hurt.” Which has a new print issue 2 out right now. This September my 304-page fully water colored graphic novel will be out from First Second Books, “The Wrenchies.”

Nick Zaremba

Nick Zaremba’s ‘no rules, no expectations, just create’ type of style makes him one of the most versatile artists around. From fine art to commercial murals and product design, Zaremba allows his imagination to roam freely, inspired by the world and colors around him. His style draws from his time studying graffiti from all over – mainly tags, line work, and bubble letters. In his most recent painting, Zaremba’s love for classic cartoons and animations from the ’50s onward to the ’90s, along with old signage graphics from children’s toys, and the diverse works and styles of Picasso shine through and manifest on his canvases in a unique and intriguing style.

Q: Tell us about the pieces you will be showing at Trifecta Year One.A: The pieces I am going to be showing as part of the Year One event are new for me and I’m really excited to hear what viewers think.

Q: What are you most excited for at the Trifecta Year One event?A: I’m most excited to work with my brother Matthew and my good buddy Cyrille Conan.

Q: What’s currently inspiring you?A: The good weather at this point; the sun, and the explosion of plant life everywhere I seem to go.

Q: Who were some major influences when you first started creating?A: When I first started creating I was really inspired by local artists at the time; Monster Project, Eddie Martinez, as well as being into Robert Crumb, Barry Mcgee, and Gahan Wilson.

Q: What projects are you currently working on?A: Right now I’m working on a project for Converse, as well as completing a series of fifty paintings of this newer style to outfit a wing of Lahey Hosptial.

Brian Butler

Brian Butler is a music scene junkie. He’s always hung out on the fringes of the music scene, making it the most consistent narrative throughout his work. He works at all different scales – zines, murals, concert art – and continually works to combine his passions together in his art. He loves making zines and gig posters, for the same reason he loves drawing at concerts, because it ties two of his passions together. He’s been practicing his concert drawings for over 5 years now, to the point where there is a big demand for it, which sparked him to start ShowDrawn.com, a place to integrate these drawing jobs into his regular stream of concerts.

Q: You do illustrations for a number of different styled projects – concert art, larger murals, zines – do you have a personal favorite?A: I’ve sort-of defined that range of mediums myself, to remedy getting bored so easily. I welcome any opportunity to bump up the scale of a drawing to the size of a building. I think my first taste of working at that scale was when I made this wicked-janky Dropkick Murphys lettering on the back of Avalon on Lansdowne, before the building was torn-down to make the House of Blues. Prime location; with like a full year of Mass Pike traffic looking that thing

Q: Tell us about the zine you will be debuting at Trifecta Year One.A: I went to SXSW in back in March, and tackled something comparable to a triathlon to fill up my sketchbook. I had a bike, and a loose schedule of wish list bands, and basically by the end, I think I filled something like 28 pages with drawings from a variety of shows, from across the entire city. I had stayed with some Boston pals while in Austin, and made a conscious effort to catch more bands out of MA, so when Trifecta brought me on-board the Year One show, it made complete sense to produce a zine around the SXSW drawings. We called it Show Drawn by South West.

Q: What’s currently inspiring you?A: I live in Miami, and that place is endlessly inspiring. Between the everglades, the punk, sludge and noise scene, and the vast dichotomy of poverty and glossy-tourism smashing together, the city is rich in inspiring stuff. Though I’m also trying to position things so it’s possible to travel a ton too. I think projects like “Show Drawn” and my mural work lend themselves nicely to travel. I’m super excited that I get to be in Boston for the Year One show. I’m writing this from LA, where I’m making an installation for the band Little Dragon to perform inside. It’s on the heels of making a comic book that pairs with their new album, Nabuma Rubberband.

Michele L’Heureux

Michele L’Heureux is intrigued by the fact that at any given time, certain fragments of our identities rise to the surface, demanding more attention, while at the same time, others lurk in the background, peeking through the layers. Her artwork takes on this notion as she creates and layers her canvases with collage-like pieces of book pages, random vinyl letters, and scraps of whatever she finds lying around. L’Heureux is a lively and invested creator and curator that finds inspiration in the forward-thinking and experimental works of the creatives and artists around her and that she stumbles across.

Q: Your paintings are made of several layers and different types of surfaces and materials, what materials have you been working with most lately?A: I use a lot of ephemera to create layers in my work: book pages, music scores, ticket stubs, cardboard, and found scrap papers. I typically collage those directly to my canvas, then paint, stencil, and screenprint on top. I’m a sucker for vinyl letters and plastic fruit mesh, too, so those often make an appearance. Recently, my favorite method is to create Sumi-e ink drawings on translucent drafting paper, cut the drawings out, then collage them onto a built-up surface so that the layers underneath show through the drawing. It mimics graffiti and other wall art in some ways.

Q: What are you most excited for at the Trifecta Year One event?A: I’m a huge fan of Helen and Morgan’s work, and I’m so thrilled to see the fruits of their hard labor altogether in one space. I can’t wait to get all the artists’ work on the walls and listen to it talk to each other! I’m really looking forward to mingling with some fabulous artists and learning some new things from them. I think the Fourth Wall gallery is a wonderful space that will be a fantastic backdrop for four days of unpredictable, raw, creative fun!

Q: Tell us about the pieces you will have at the event.A: I’m planning to create a small installation using a bunch of pieces created in the past year that have not been shown before. They are mostly collage, acrylic, and screenprinting on a variety of surfaces–wood, canvas, panel, paper, cardboard, and fabric. I plan to build the installation on site. It’s a lot of figurative work, and my aim is to get the figures to interact with one another in a new space, in new configurations, as they’ve been holed up in my studio for months

Q: What’s currently inspiring you?A: Call me old school, but I’m jazzed up by many artists I discover on Instagram, particularly those who are working on the streets or in spaces outside the gallery. Keeping tabs on my Instagram faves inspires me to keep my hands moving, try some fresh approaches, and to look at things from a different angle. I’m about to take 14 months off to travel in the US and live in Portugal, where my only goal is to learn Portuguese and make art, so that’s pretty much my driving inspiration these days!